The Living Newspaper

The Living Newspaper was produced for the exhibition Inside Job, a group show of work by members of staff who work for Tate. It takes two formats, as a published tabloid-style newspaper distributed in the staff room and at the staff entrance of Tate Modern, and as a series of discrete performances enacted by members of staff from a variety of different departments of Tate Modern during the hours of their waged-work throughout the duration of the exhibiton.

The newspaper lists the details of the performances, alongside written accounts of the performances in the form of essays and fictional narratives, acting as a conduit between supportive information, propositional texts and documentary images of the work.

The performances were sourced from a variety of archives and documents generated by or about Tate Modern, such as photographs and written descriptions of performances and material relating to funding and sponsership. These performances were then repurposed and adapted for staff to be able to perform within the parameters and spaces of their waged-work roles within Tate Modern.

The Living Newspaper was originally a title of Bolshevik acting troupes who, prior to and during the Russian Revolution, performed and enacted information from newspapers to the workers, some even producing their own papers. At their peak there was an estimated several thousand Living Newspaper troupes active throughout Soviet Russia.

Written and produced by Elaine Reynolds, Chris Timms, and Frank Wasser in 2018.

For a free copy please email: chriscotimms@gmail.com

Above: Documentation of The Living Newspaper publication.
Below: Documentation of a series of performative readings of a selection of the newspaper texts at an open studios event in ACME studios, Stratford.